From Town Criers to Bloggers: How Will Journalism Survive the Internet Age? #544505-02000

From Town Criers to Bloggers: How Will Journalism Survive the Internet Age? #544505-02000

June 9, 2010 5:03pm

Submission Number:

544505-02000

Commenter:

Larry Elliott

Organization:

home

State:

Montana

Initiative Name:

From Town Criers to Bloggers: How Will Journalism Survive the Internet Age?

I find it troubling that the FTC and FCC feel it desirable to not only control journalism and speech, but also want to tax the means of communication and those individuals that this administration disagrees with. This sounds like something that would have been done in the USSR, People's Republic of China, or other governments where the people had no guarantee of freedom of expression. The First Amendment wasn't written to ensure that nude tabletop dancing or flag burning wouldn't be infringed upon. It was written to prevent the government from infringing on the people's right to express their opinions on matters of concern to them, including telling their elected representatives that they disagree with them. If we are only to be allowed to hear the opinions of those that the government agrees with I'm sure that will please the administration, but it most assuredly violates the spirit and intent of the First Amendment. If the administration or politicians are offended by the comments and speech of the people maybe it would be well to listen to what the people are saying instead of just dismissing them as the "great unwashed" who are too ignorant or just plain stupid to be considered. It seems to me that those who have spent their entire adult lives in academia in an "elite" university, are amongst the least qualified to tell the rest of us how we should live our lives. Instead of studying and theorizing about what people do and how people actually live we've been doing and living. Journalists have no more right to become a protected class than anyone else. The idea that taxpayers should subsidize or support journalists is one of the more bizarre things I've ever heard. Maybe we should subsidize typewriter repairmen because their chosen trade is becoming obsolete as well? If journalists and the "news" organizations that employ them are finding it hard these days maybe it's because the public has finally discovered that they've been lied to for the past several decades by the journalists and "news" organizations. It seems to me that is what the problem is, and the proposed "reinvention of journalism" to suppress any dissenting voices will only cause more dissent/